Hi, I would really appreciate your thoughts on coleges that will suit our hs junior (mild) asperger girl.
• Her school GPA is 4.4
• N. has taken math and science classes “dual enrollment”at a local community college. Her GPA 3.8.
•she is a Davidson Young Scholar
• She scored a 1550 (770/780) on her SAT and a 36 on the ACT.
• She’s a co-captain of her school’s Science Olympiad team, and has earned a number of medals at Regional level.
• She has been a competitive swimmer and cross-country runner for the past several years, but is not particularly strong in either sport.
• She’s also done some serious study for music theory and piano performance, and has a British College Level 6 certificate.
• N.did on a couple of NASA summer programs.
•she’s fluent in 3 languages.
N. is kind of a “backstage brilliant” type of girl, not super noticeable, and she doesn’t crave or seek out the spotlight at all. She is incredibly sweet, mellow, passive, gentle, and very very modest and sensitive. This kind of kid can practically disappear in our school culture here in Northern Virginia.
She would like to study Astronomy with undergraduate research opportunities. She is capable but likely to be too polite to ask or fight for the (research) spot. Her dream job is in NASA mission control. She doesn’t quite fit in in hs. We want her to be happy in college.
Where would N. find her clan/tribe?
Should she choose only a smaller college?
We have a bunch of places that have been suggested to us, and would appreciate your thoughts: CalTech, MIT, Harvard (where her father, uncle and aunt studied), Yale, Princeton, Wellesley, Smith, Carnegie-Mellon, Haverford, Vassar, and U. of Virginia. Someone also suggested U. of Chicago.
We have also heard that U. of Colorado (Boulder), U. of Texas, and U. of Maryland should be considered because of their proximity to or association with NASA.
I really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions, and thank you for reading this long post.
N sounds like the sort of student who has a real likelihood to do well when they go off to university. One issue with being very smart (which sounds like it is the case here) is that when you get to a good college or university there are a lot more people who are “like you” than there were in high school.
“She is capable but likely to be too polite to ask or fight for the (research) spot.”
We have some experience with someone who sounds similar. One issue at a small university is that when the class average is 50 on a test and you get a 90, then the professor is likely to remember you. Do this a few times and the professor might be looking for your help in their research.
To me a smaller school sounds like a good fit. However, it also seems likely that she will do well at a wide range of schools. Wellesley College is one school that came to mind when I read your original post. MIT has the Haystack Observatory which is quite cool.
She is a our only child and we plan to sell our starter home for her college. So she should be able to effort any college that she chooses and accepted her.
I’d try to visit a host of different types of schools and not get hung up on prestige. You might want to check out Purdue for NASA connections as well and I’d look at other Women’s colleges like Mount Holyoke and Bryn Mawr.
I’d add Purdue, Northwestern, and Cornell to the list of schools to research for her intended major.
“She is capable but likely to be too polite to ask or fight for the (research) spot.”
As for this, she’s not going to need to fight for a spot but she’ll need to develop the confidence to apply, and be able to sell herself to both professors and recruiters. She’ll need to be able to do that anywhere she goes to school. University career centers can help tremendously with those skills so encourage her to take advantage of that early on.
PS. Even at large universities, you’ll get noticed by professors for being the curve breaker ; )
Rice University is the first place that comes to mind for me. Yes, it’s a research university, but it’s smaller even than any of the Ivies - fewer than 4000 students and fewer than 7000 including graduate students. Undergrads get a lot of attention here. The prof to student ratio is 7:1, dorms are organized on a residential college model similar to Yale and Harvard, and it has won awards for undergraduate teaching. It’s a place that works hard to build a sense of community. It’s not strongly political one way or another, which relieves some of the interpersonal stress at a lot of colleges. The undergrads are serious students, but it doesn’t have a reputation for cutthroat competition. Lots of opportunities for research.
I’ve saved the best for last. It’s in Houston, home of the Johnson Space Center. The campus is beautiful and spacious, located between the Museum District and the zoo with the theater district close by as well.
I did an internet search for happiest campus and Rice was there on the top spot. We need to take N there to see the campus. Texas intimidates her somehow.
Look carefully at Harvey Mudd College (hmc.edu). As a STEM school, it is at the same level as the other schools that you are considering. It is an undergraduate school only, and the students and professors are very supportive of each other. There are internship opportunities at JPL, or at Space-x or Virgin Orbit, if those might be of interest, plus research on campus itself.
Texas intimidates me too. To her I would say, What harm is there in visiting? If you don’t like it, we move on. Maybe a campus visit could be combined with a tour of the Johnson Space Center - if things ever open up.
60+% of the students at Rice come from out of state. As one of the fastest growing states in the country, many of the in state students actually grew up some place else before their families moved to Texas.
If geography is a factor, what other places intimidate her? OTOH, are their specific locations that she prefers?
DadTwoGirls we are looking at William, Smith and Wellesley. Do you happen to know Which school is stronger in Astronomy? Are they pretty much the same communitywise?
All 3 have good astronomy programs. The Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory, available to Smith students, is really neat. The Smith Astronomy Department is part of the Five College Astronomy Department. Most courses are taken on campus, but it is really a different beast than the other 2 schools.
Bill Marsh. We appreciate the information about “ the Five College…”. We’ve never heard of it. N. will look it up.
“Communitywise, these 3 are all very different.”
In your opinion, where can N. likely to find her clan? ( the college that Doc Brown (from Back to the Future) will thrive academically, socially and emotionally ? )
I’d think she could find her clan in just about any top 100 type school (top 50 LAC). I think she might like the Women’s Colleges (Smith, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr all mentioned). HMC that someone mentioned is also part of of a Consortium that includes Scripps (all women).
My D17 was similar to your D. She applied to a lot of the schools that you and other people have mentioned and we visited a lot more than that. She was a perspective Neuroscience major though but she’s ended up an Astrophysics major. I think she would have been happy at a number of the schools already listed.
If so, she’d be eligible for big merit and Honors College at UCF. They really take care of the Honors kids (great housing all four years, close-knit community) and it’s a particularly strong school for Astronomy & Planetary Sciences. https://www.ucf.edu/news/for-those-who-dream-of-space-ucf-is-the-place/ I know a young woman with similar passions who is thriving in that program.
“My D17 was similar to your D. She applied to a lot of the schools that you and other people have mentioned and we visited a lot more than that. She was a perspective Neuroscience major though but she’s ended up an Astrophysics major. I think she would have been happy at a number of the schools already listed”
May I ask where did she decide to go and how does she like it?